Student Loan Debt Depriving U.S. Agriculture Of Future Leaders

Student Loan Debt Depriving U.S. Agriculture Of Future Leaders

One Trillion Dollars. That figure is the total U.S. citizens have in outstanding student loan debt. It’s a tough figure to swallow for anyone of any age.

As troubling as that figure is for the future workforce as a whole, it is more troubling for those hoping to embark on a career in agriculture.

Eric Hansen

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Now imagine you’re one of the many young people trying to secure capital for a bright future in farming. Young growers with a significant unsecured debt struggle to secure loans to purchase the equipment they’ll need, or to ride the ebbs and flows of farming income.

“Farming is not the same as it was 30 years ago. It is a much more technically complex industry — people need technological skills, financial management, marketing skills, and business knowledge to succeed in farming,” says Eric Hansen, policy advocate for the National Young Farmers Coalition. “This is a field where it is getting more difficult to succeed in without a college education.”

Biggest Stumbling Blocks For Future Farmers

Hansen’s organization advocates and represents next-generation and first-generation farmers. The group surveyed its members to find out what the biggest challenges are to entering agriculture. One of the largest concerns survey respondents cited was student loan debt.

“Student loans were delaying or preventing 30% of our survey respondents from farming,” he says. “Another 28% said that student loans prevented them from growing their business, and 20% said they were unable to obtain credit because of their student loans.”

Graphic courtesy of the National Young Farms Coalition

Hansen says these figures are definitely troubling to the agriculture industry. Farming is very capital-intensive, and young growers often struggle with the up-front costs of modern growing techniques.

“There are so many fixed assets in the ground that you have to be able to finance getting started,” he says. “It’s particularly challenging dealing with these credit access issues, which is a huge part of the student loan debt story.”

Which is why his organization helped petition for The Young Farmer Success Act. The bill was introduced to the floor this past summer by Reps. Chris Gibson (R-NY) and Joe Courtney (D-CT).

The bill amends the Student Assistance portion of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to include a full-time job as an employee or manager of a farm as a “public service job.” This would make anyone employed by a farm or ranch full-time eligible to apply for the Public Service Employee Loan Forgiveness Program.

“There are some professions for which there is a national interest and a public interest in having people working,” Hansen says. “Those careers are not always lucrative enough to cover someone’s student loan debt coming out of education. This program was meant to address that gap.”
To qualify, the farm needs to have a gross revenue of at least $35,000 in 2015. Debtors would need to make qualifying student loan payments, using an income-based repayment plan for 10 years. If there is still outstanding debt after 10 years, the balance will be forgiven.

Christina Herrick is the Senior Editor of American Fruit Grower® magazine, published by Meister Media Worldwide. See all author stories here.

If you work your way through college then you don’t find yourself in debt. Why should the American taxpayers pay to put someone else’s children through school. We shouldn’t have politicians and bureaucrats deciding who gets a free ride; who wins and who loses.

A Quote by Dr. Walter Williams: “We’ve become an immoral people demanding that Congress forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another. Deficits and runaway national debt are merely symptoms of the real problem.”

And this quote from Mark Levin’s book; Plunder and Deceit (Chapter 5 on Education):

“The ruling generation of the political class has, in effect, bribed voters to keep them in power, by mortgaging the future of those who have not yet woken up to what is being done to them by their elders. The growth of student debt are astounding, and will eventually cause a crisis that will make the 2008 housing crisis look like a day at the beach. Naturally, plans are already in place to nationalize this debt and eventually taxpayers will be on the hook.”

And to think this bill was cosponsored by a Republican. Bills such as this serve to endorse Bernie Sanders! Wake up america, why would a nation do this to its future generation not yet born!!

We should not be looking for the government to solve the student debt problem. If you have debt raise the price of what you sell. It is not the government’s role to bail you out of bad decisions on how much debt you have taken on. More and more people want to be pigs at the government trough.